Kerr frames her colorful narrative of her scientific objectives with autobiographical details of her own thrill-seeking...
The author’s quest to understand the psychology of thrill-seeking and fear.
Kerr, who holds a doctorate in sociology, seeks to explain how courting extreme experiences that challenge our fears can lead to a happier life. Her focus is not on the use of fear as a marketing device to “sell products and shape political debate” but on what fear triggers within us. Ordinarily bottled-up emotions are released, followed by an exuberant sense of exhilaration. Over the years, in her search for thrills and chills, Kerr has visited “the world's scariest haunted houses,” ridden on “its steepest roller coasters,” dangled “suspended by a cable, from one of the tallest human made structures,” experienced solitary confinement, and more. Her many adventures began with a haunted house experience at age 6 and continued with roller coasters during her adolescence. She reports how flirting with danger by challenging her body's adaptation to gravity on a two-minute roller-coaster ride evoked a cathartic state of high arousal, accompanied by screams and tears and followed by a daylong feeling of euphoria. Kerr's scientific interest was aroused years ago when she first visited ScareHouse, “a haunted attraction in Pittsburgh.” At the time, she was writing her dissertation and working on a project concerning health care. She began moonlighting at ScareHouse, analyzing customer surveys on how they rated their experiences. This led to her taking an active role in designing immersive experiences using actors who interact with visitors. Since 2014, she has been engaged in a formal collaboration with cognitive neuroscientist Greg Siegle to study the responses of the brain and body to fear. One of the tests involves brain scans that are administered to volunteers who are given tasks for them to perform before and after they visit the exhibits. As the author notes in this enjoyable account, “being scared significantly [makes] people feel better.”
Kerr frames her colorful narrative of her scientific objectives with autobiographical details of her own thrill-seeking experiences.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61039-482-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
